Tag: Nikon F3

And I’m back with the shots! As I said in the previous post, I took the risk and went for the development times for Rollei Retro 400S to process my Svema Foto 400 rolls in HC-110.

It was a bold move for me, as I’m not a seasoned film expert and all the guestimates are quite hard for me. The suggested time was 6:30 at 20 degrees and the results are right in front of you.

Nikon F3, Svema Foto 400

Nikon F3, Svema Foto 400

Nikon F3, Svema Foto 400

Nikon F3, Svema Foto 400

Nikon F3, Svema Foto 400

Nikon F3, Svema Foto 400

I must say I was pretty sure this wouldn’t ruin the film, the time is not critically long or short, so I expected to get something. The question was if it would be acceptable. Turned out really great in my opinion.

The film, as stated by Leslie Lazenby of FPP, dries flat and feels quite thin, but scanning was smooth without any issues in contrast to Rollei Retro 80S. Some of the photos were underexposed, but I blame the camera for this, as it’s done this already before with Kodak Tri-X. As for the contrast in the most of the pictures, I guess the dev time could be a little shorter, but it’s not over the top and I like the result. Another forum advice for this film-developer combo was to process it for 6 minutes, so maybe it wouldn’t be that contrasty, but anyway.

While searching for the receipt last week, I found an old forum thread where a person had exactly the same situation as mine. That was the thread I found the suggestions in but the funny thing was the direction the discussion took almost immediately. Instead of using the power of the collective mind and experience to help, people started arguing if this Svema film was the genuine stock from the original factory. Pretty soon they were talking about some Russian guys who sell the stock and whether you should buy it and stuff, someone posted pictures of the destroyed factory as proof that this Svema wasn’t the original and so on.

The stock has no indication whatsoever on the film itself, not even a frame number, so it is really a mystery what kind of film it is. And the FPP guys don’t really disclose their sources as far as I know.

But it doesn’t matter! I had fun shooting the film, and I’m pretty happy with the results and this is the most important part.

As I’ve mentioned already here or on social media, I’ve got myself a 100 ft roll of Kodak Tri-X 400 and now all of my 35mm cameras – which is not many – are loaded with it. Before the latest batch, the results were so-so to my taste. A puzzling mixture of failed expectations and “I’m open to whatever develops from this”. On one hand, I was a little bit upset about the outcome in terms of tonality, overall quality and where the hack that famous grain is anyway! On the other hand, I’ve never shot Tri-X before and adding a new developer to the workflow I was curious to see how it compares to what I had.

That was before I developed another roll of Tri-X this weekend. Shot on my Nikon F3 with the 50mm f/1.8 lens, the photos came out so great I wanted to print some of them while looking at the scanner previews. I don’t post pictures of my family often, but this time I’ve included one of my son drawing just because I like the tones, shadows and grain so much.

Now I see why this film is so acclaimed and praised. I have also learned once again how important it is for the final result to use film appropriately. By this, I mean how film works in different light situations. With the box speed of ISO 400, I’m a bit struggling to get great results outside in the sun. The pictures have blown highlights, so ND filter maybe?

If you have any advice on that, I’ll be glad to hear. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy the photos.

For the last month or so I’ve been developing only colour film and kinda forgot how it feels to soup b&w. Last weekend I’ve finally unpacked my new developer for black and white – Kodak HC-110 – and did a couple of rolls. As more pictures from those two are coming, I want to start off with a flower. I found this flower one day and immediately hurried home to shoot it. Totally I shot several 35mm black and white frames, Kodak Portra medium format and digital. The colour film version is in the queue but in the meantime enjoy the monochrome.

It is also my first time using this developer and so far I like the results, though there is definitely space for improvement.

One of my colleagues, having seen me with a film camera, brought his old Nikon F65 and gave me as a present. In a camera bag, I found an unexposed roll of Lucky film and decided to test the camera with this roll. As it hasn’t been refrigerated for a long time I expected it to be something completely different from what I’m used to seeing in my colour film. And oh boy different it was! As you can see below everything came out with this magenta colour tone, and some shots also have a kind of stripes across the frame. Thanks to modern technologies I can save those pictures a little bit in post processing, but anyway, that was fun.

This is how the images turned out.

And this is a processed frame.

More magenta!

My other roll in this batch was Fujifilm C200 and it turned out really good despite being an expired film as well. Now I don’t remember if I shot it as ISO 100 or at box speed, but I love the results. Check out some of them.

Getting ready

A safeguard safeguarding

Old, rusty but colourful

Iron people deserve pets too

The experiment with the Lucky film got me thinking about cross-processing slide film in C-41 chemistry. I think I might give it a go once I get my hands on some cheap colour slide. Until then I’ve got my b&w film and chemicals waiting so I’ll be back with more home developed stuff to share here. Cheers!

Recently I’ve finally started to develop colour film at home. Having bought the chemicals several months ago I couldn’t get it going, you know, I had to make the chemicals from powder concentrates and for that I had to bring water to a certain temperature and in order to do that I had to warm water… ugh. Sometimes I felt too lazy to bother or just couldn’t find time.

Anyway, the chemicals are now ready and I’ll develop all my colour film accumulated last and this year little by little. Meanwhile, I really enjoy the results.

Seen above is one of the pictures I took at the swimming pool last summer and the way it came out reminds me once again why I love film. Shot on expired Fuji film plus almost a year of waiting for development, the picture has these dominant colors of red and blue which makes it either kind of cross process-y or somewhat impressionist.